There is a multitude of financial factors to consider when evaluating your return on investment of a freeze dryer such as food inflation, emergency preparedness, saving costs on backpacking/camping foods, and reducing food waste. A vast variety of benefits of owning a freeze dryer extend beyond the significant financial savings. Think of the convenience, quality control over ingredients to improve health, chemistry/ science experiments to educate children, emergency preparedness without the need to rely on electricity, lightweight food for backpacking, and so much more. There's typically no hesitation for an avid backpacker, culinary master, prepper, homesteader, or an educator, to snag one up instantly as they quickly realize the value their home freeze dryer offers.

Freeze-dried food is shelf-stable, lightweight, and has the longest shelf life of any other preservation method. Freeze-drying preserves dairy and egg products that other preservation methods cannot. Freeze drying can add 22 more years to the shelf life of pressure canning of low acid foods. Freeze-dried meals nutrition, taste, and texture is closer to fresh than dehydrated foods. Most foods taste great straight out of the bag such as fruits, candies, desserts, veggies. Meals, meats, and dairy only need about 10 minutes and 1 2/3 cups of boiling water per 4 ounces to reconstitute to its original texture and taste. Home freeze dried products are 85% cheaper than commercially freeze-dried products. This includes taking supplies, electrical costs, and depreciation value of the unit itself into consideration. Start-up cost is typically the only true perceived disadvantage. This article will highlight how a freeze dryer can become a food budget saving machine for even those living below the poverty line.

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Buying your food for less at the grocery store

Since the freeze dryer can suspend the expiration date, you can pick up food that is closer to expiration that is often marked down by 75% or more! You can also shop for items on sale with out having to limit the amount you buy due to consern of it spoiling before using it. Once you get your first year of food stored, you can wait to shop until something is on sale instead of panic purchasing for the day/month you need it for.

Addressing the average American household

At first glance, a frugal family may wonder if a freeze-dryer would save enough money to justify the purchase. I will explain the math in more detail later. As a quick reference, the average American household can reallocate a small portion of their food budget and waste avoidance to gain $633 savings a month. This would mean breaking even on your initial capital expense of a freeze dryer in just a few months. Not bad for a device designed to last 15+ years.

If you use the suggested savings budget to purchase the initial cost of a freeze dryer, you would reach a breakeven point on the capital purchase in a few months regardless of the unit size. For the next 14+ years, you start saving or making a profit. Perhaps, then you can treat your family to a vacation with the annual savings.

An instant savings of $200/ month occurs through freeze drying food that would have otherwise ended up in the trash. You can use it to cover lunches at work now to save $15-$20 each time, or use as an emergency food storage and gain an average of $400/ month based on a shelf life of 25 years and inflation trends. Freeze dry foods you love to eat so consuming the freeze-dried foods is something you look forward to doing on hikes, camping trips, road trips, hotel stays, and work lunches.

The average American household spends $750 a month on eating out (restaurants, coffee, fast food, and delivery services) 5.9 times a week. This would assume a budget of $20/day five times a week for lunch and eating out as a family once a week with a budget of $55. Are you spending more or less than the average american family? Even if you set a goal to reduce eating out to 3 times a week instead of 5.9, you could easily save $375 a month.

The retail value of a 4-ounce freeze-dried pouch that reconstitutes back to 1lb of food is $11 and can be made in the freeze dryer using superior ingredients for as little as $3.75. Offering a savings or profit of $7.25 per pound of food. The table below compares each unit by multiplying $7.25 by the fresh food per year the freeze dryer can produce. Then multiplies the 15-year life expentancy of the freeze dryer and subtracting the capital expense of its purchase to determine the dyer’s lifetime savings or profit.

You can change the freeze dryer from an expense to an investment whether it is for personal use, family and friends renting out to do a few batches, or a launching a new business venture, the freeze dryer is a worthwhile asset. The great news is that they hold their value. If you ever find your freeze-drying use slows once you squirrel away 1-25 years of food for your family, you can easily resell it. It is hard to find a used unit as most families prefer to keep them.

Progressing out of Poverty

If you are one of the 8% of Americans relying on government EBT assistance, you might be thinking you are destined to stay in debt and suffering food insecurity. I enjoy helping families get out of debt and ridding their lives from government dependency to jump start their journey to financial freedom. You are worth identifying a way to break free from poverty. If at the poverty line, this might be a good time to reassess escaping government reliance doing the research to become self-efficient selling freeze-dried foods. There is little labor involved in freeze drying and most individuals suffering from a disability are still able to use one.

Look up cottage food laws and begin making money. Retail value is $11 per 4 ounce package. This provides a $7.25 per bag profit margin. Based on the volume that each freeze dryer can handle, you can profit $72,147‬ annually using an XL unit, $35,990 annually using a large unit, $21,537 annually using a medium unit, or $12,883 a year using a small unit. You can even start out using your ebt benefits to obtain your food start up and using profits towards an even bigger food budget.

It is well known, you need money to make money, right? There are several cash back apps that instead of providing a coupon savings at the register for a grocery item, you can obtain a cash back rebate. My favorite app is a Colorado company, Ibotta. When I take the time to evaluate the cash back offers, I achieve 30-50% back on the groceries I purchase each month. A Colorado family of 4 qualifies up to $973 of food assistance. If you even got 30% cash back on your monthly spending, you would gain a new cashflow of $291 a month. Since it is a rebate and not income, you do not need to pay taxes on it. At $291 a month, you could save enough cash to purchase the small freeze dryer outright in as little as 8.5 months.

Comment below if you want more information on how to use Ibotta. I keep an excel spreadsheet to help track pricing, aisle location, bonuses, and the highest % of money back. Please use my referral link to get an extra $5 or more cash back and bless us with $5 as well: https://ibotta.oelnk.me/iUfE/8cc13c64?friend_code=wwlofju or enter referral code: wwlofju when you sign up. It is a legal way to turn food stamps into cash and still obtain your full food benefits. I recommend Ibotta to any family regardless if they pay by cash or EBT.

Food Waste Avoidance

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all gave back to our community and freeze-dried left-over foods and donated some to the homeless and foodbanks? The average American easily wastes 325 pounds of food per person annually.

Pause a moment to think about all the dairy and condiments that expire before you get the opportunity to use them. The United States discards more food than any other country in the world. According to Feeding America, we waste more than $408 billion a year on food with dairy products being the food item we toss out most and produce coming in 2nd place. How often do you purchase fresh produce only to find out it went bad before you got a chance to use it? How often does your garden out produce what your family can reasonably eat?

Then, think about all your leftovers or that end up in the trash.  Before  freeze-drying, I use to dedicate 2 days a week to consume leftovers to reduce our family's waste.  The luxury of freeze-drying eliminates making plans based on ingredient expiration dates.  Suspend the importance of having to eat everything you prepared in a certain time frame and simply eat what you feel like eating. How often do you enjoy your homemade meal but just don’t feel like eating the left overs the next day? A recent study by the USDA found that the average American family discards upwards of $2,400 worth of food per year. The ease of freeze drying at home could change this bad habit. Instead of waiting for food to go bad and tossing in the trash, toss into the freeze dryer and store it. I am confident you will get a chance to eat it within the 25-year expiration. If I am wrong, donate it instead of discarding valuable food. According to the USDA, 1 in 8 households struggle with food insecurity. Please consider helping.

Food Inflation

From 1913 to 2023, food experienced an average inflation rate of 3.22% per year. In other words, food costing $20 in the year 1913 would cost $650.49 in 2023 for an equivalent purchase. Freeze dried food has a shelf life of 25+ years when properly stored. If we look at the last 25 years, food experienced an average inflation rate of 2.83%. In other words, food costing $20 in the year 1998 would cost $40.17 in 2023 for an equivalent purchase. It is reasonable to expect a 3% or higher inflation rate average over the next 25 years. Thus, any food that you purchase with today’s pricing and store to consume up to 25 years later will save you 50% just on inflation alone.

To help families get an idea of their grocery budget, the USDA has provided a cost estimate using their Thrifty Food Plan. According to this estimate, a referenced family of four (consisting of a heterosexual couple between the ages of 20 and 50 with two children between 6 and 8 and between 9 and 11) would spend around $967.70 per month to eat a balanced diet. By 2050, families that consume $1000/month in groceries today can expect to spend $2000/month in groceries. If you freeze dried an emergency year’s worth of long term food storage for your family and consumed it 25 years later, the future you saves $12,000.

Obviously, the peace of mind of having a year’s supply of emergency food is worth more than a few thousand dollars. The savings just helps the most frugal of us to realize the value of investing in owning a freeze dryer.

It is nice to know that not only are you storing food for an emergency, it is food that you love to eat and can be used frequently when camping, hiking, or on road trips. Most foods taste delicious straight out of the bag such as fruits, snacks, and veggies. It is easy to bring a meal back to life with 1 2/3 cups of boiling water per 4 ounces.

Stop buying freeze dried food from the store.

If you are someone that already enjoys store-bought freeze-dried foods and meals. You can see a return on your investment in less than a month. Mountain House has been a trusted resource for backpacker’s freeze-dried meals and their prices are comparable to their competitors. Obviously, the variety of meals offered are nowhere near the infinite combinations you could make controlling your own ingredients.

A two-serving Mountain House beef stroganoff with noodles costs about $11 a pouch. They define a serving as 2 ounces. Typically, 4 ounces or 500 calories is a more realistic meal per person. Even purchasing the similar ingredients at Whole Foods, making the meal, freeze drying it (electricity, pump oil), and packaging in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber averages about $3.75 a meal using a freeze dryer. If you are a vegetarian, you can probably pull off meals as low as $2. Thus, to determine the capital purchase breakeven point, we would subtract $3.75 meal price by the Mountain House $11 meal which equals a $7.25 per meal savings. Then, we take the $5295 cost of an XL freeze Dryer and divide it by the $7.25 savings per meal and find that we need to produce 730 meals (730lbs. orginal weight). Then, we can calculate how many batches we need to complete and the length of time of those cycles. This can be done in as little as 4 weeks! The table below compares each size of freeze-dryer.

I find emergency freeze dried food advertisements funny. They try to lure families into buying their expensive pouches with the marketing idea that instead of buying a machine to freeze dry, you can buy a year’s supply of their food already freeze-dried for a similar price. While the pricing comparison might be true, the reality is their offer is only a 1- year emergency supply for a few thousand dollars. You would be left with only a year’s worth of food to show for your money. If you invest in a freeze dryer, you can make food for over 15 years and easily get to a 25-year supply for your family. Not only is it enough for an emergency, it allows you to stop paying for food inflation over the next 25 years. It is natural to think, "but then I have to buy the freeze dryer and the food I am going to freeze dry". The marketing companies are thriving on this line of thinking. Let me remind you of the $2,400/year average that you are currently wasting that could be freeze dried without even changing your current food budget.

You also get to control each recipe. Instead of a store-bought variety pack where you might only like a few flavors, a home freeze dryer lets you have complete control of your favorite restaurant leftovers and home cooked meals. You can also store more of your garden foods and have a vast food supply on hand that you can wait until something goes on sale again before purchasing.

Are you ready to add a freeze dryer to your life? If so, enjoy free shipping to your home using our affiliate link to bless us with a small commission and you will get the same or auto discounted pricing through Harvest Right: https://affiliates.harvestright.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=2625&url=458

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